The Professorship of History of Botany and Horticulture is located at an interdisciplinary interface between biology, the history of knowledge and landscape architecture. We work together with various fields and initiate new projects, for example with the history of medicine, zoology and also landscape architecture and plant use. Recently, we have also been able to count the Institute of Catholic Theology among our partners.

Last April, Professor Brixius published her book 'Creolised Science: Knowledge in the Eighteenth Century Indo-Pacific' with Cambridge University Press, in which she explores traditional plant knowledge, particularly from indigenous people in the Indo-Pacific and enslaved women and men in Mauritius, as it found its way into the culture of economically important plants and European science, and how these cross-cultural processes took place. The book is a call to appreciate and examine historical plant knowledge in its own cultural contexts.

The magazine of the Master's 'Biology in Society' met with Professor Brixius to find out more about her research interests, what she is most looking forward to in her new position and what books she would recommend everyone to read.